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I didn’t plan to practice yoga with my child.
At first, I would roll out my mat during quiet moments, hoping for a few uninterrupted breaths.
Yoga had been a place of focus and structure for me—a space I entered with intention, discipline, and a desire for stillness.
Motherhood quietly rearranged all of that.
The practice no longer unfolded in silence. There were interruptions, questions, small footsteps, and the constant awareness of another presence in the room. At times, it felt like something had been taken away from my practice—the calm, the control, the predictability I once relied on.
Then something unexpected happened.
My child began to appear beside me when I practiced. Not to imitate the poses. Not to “do yoga” in the way adults understand practice. Just to be close.
At first, I resisted. I tried to redirect, to finish quickly, to reclaim a few minutes for myself. But over time, I noticed a shift—not in my child, but in me.
What I once labeled as interruption,
was actually an invitation.
An invitation to soften my expectations. To release the idea that practice must look a certain way. To notice what happens in the body when closeness replaces control. Something in my nervous system began to settle.
As my movements slowed, my breath softened. The urgency I carried into the practice slowly dissolved. There was no longer a need to perform or achieve. The mat became less about shapes and more about presence.
This is where Yoga Nidra quietly entered my life.
I found myself drawn less to physical postures and more to practices that supported deep rest. Yoga Nidra offered something I hadn’t realized I needed—a way to feel held, even in the midst of responsibility.
Lying down, supported, with my child sometimes resting nearby, a different kind of practice emerged. One rooted in safety rather than effort. In listening rather than doing.
Yoga Nidra reminded my body that rest is not passive.
It is a state of regulation.
A return to balance.
A remembering.
Motherhood did not take yoga away from me. It changed it.
It taught me that practice does not require separation.
That presence can be shared.
That rest can happen in imperfect living rooms—with soft breaths, quiet closeness, and the gentle understanding that nothing needs to be fixed.
The mat is no longer a place I go to escape life.
It is where life joins me.
~
author: Gigi (Cigdem Akisik Kurtul)
Image: Author's Own
Editor: Molly Murphy
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